Billinghurst Cave

A giant stride lands you straight over the mouth of the passage, and the reef-wall entrance waits between 20 and 26m depending on the route in. Follow the left-hand wall and the roof dips before natural daylight fades altogether. Some divers turn back here; others keep going. About five minutes and sixty metres later, over a floor of fine sand and shingle, a slope of loose boulders rises into a second chamber. Surface there and you're in an air pocket enclosed in rock, breathing through your regulator with a torch on a vaulted ceiling roughly five metres overhead and a far wall some thirty-five metres away. Shrimp shelter in cracks in the cavern walls near the air pocket. The way out is a ladder near the cave mouth, or a swim along the wall toward Reqqa Point to finish the dive there instead.

Despite its name, Billinghurst Cave is a cavern, not a technical cave, and that distinction is the site's whole identity. Every dive shop with a dedicated page for it, and more than one experienced diver discussing it in cave-training circles, agrees on the point: no technical certification changes what's needed here. What makes it feel like a cave rather than a cavern is length. At close to 100m, it's long enough to give a genuine, if brief, sense of an overhead environment, even though it never stops being a cavern. A Mediterranean slipper lobster, growing to around 45cm, has been photographed clinging to the rock near the exit. Set beside Gozo's other marquee cavern, Cathedral Cave, the comparison is stark: that site is shorter, brighter and easier, while Billinghurst trades light for length and a genuine, if brief, sense of true overhead diving.

A torch is not optional here. Natural light disappears for a real stretch of the middle passage, on every account of this dive, and a stage cylinder is worth carrying if you plan to go the full distance. You don't have to. The cavern's size and the silhouette of daylight at the exit are visible without full penetration, so a partial visit is a legitimate choice if you're less sure about the overhead section. Entry is a short concrete ramp off the coast road, then a rough limestone walk past Reqqa Point to the cave mouth, kitting up near the vehicles; railings help with the climb down, and the last step into the water is a short jump. A seasonal ladder near the cave assists the exit through summer. The access path is sharp underfoot, so wear something sturdier than reef shoes. Buoyancy matters more than usual on the sand-and-boulder floor, where the passage narrows through a few confined turns; keep trim tight rather than settling toward the bottom. Given the depth and how long this dive tends to run, a thicker exposure suit or drysuit is worth considering outside the height of summer.